“Structural dissatisfaction: Returning to circumstances that once pleased you, after having experienced a more thrilling or opulent way of life, and finding that you can no longer tolerate them.”

“He'd once told me that the art of getting ahead in New York was based on learning how to express dissatisfaction in an interesting way. The air was full of rage and complaint. People had no tolerance for your particular hardship unless you knew how to entertain them with it.”

“Keep your eyes on Christ, not the circumstances you find yourself in or the feelings you are experiencing.”

“Life can be lived as a temporary arrangement. Life is a temporary arrangement! But the longer you go without changing, the more obscure the likelihood you ever will. After enough time passes, the idea of another way of life grows even more misty.”

“What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every painand every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence ... 'Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon whospoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would haveanswered him, 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' ...The question in each and every thing, 'Do you desire this once more and innumerabletimes more?' would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight.”

“Whether or not you find your own way, you're bound to find some way. If you happen to find my way, please return it, as it was lost years ago. I imagine by now it's quite rusty.”